Co.lJI�"'• 1'77, by .T. B. ALDRIC•H.
l1nlversil}" Press: Welch, Blielow. & Co,, Cambrid(i:e,
CONTENTS.
A. MIDNIGHT FANTASY .
Pag� 7
TUE LITTLE VIOLINIST
n
A MIDNIGllT FilTASY. PA.RT I.
fmjf was close upon eleven o'clock when I stepped out of the rear
lliiJ
vestibule of the Boston Theatre, and, pass ing through the narrow court that leads
to West Street, struck across the Common
diagonally.
Indeed, as I set foot on the
Tremont Street mall, I heard the Old South drowsily sounding the hour.
It was a tranquil June night, with no
moon, but clusters of sensitive stars that
seemed to shiver with cold as the wind o,g;,,,,, by
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A MIDNIGHT FANTASY,
swept by them, for perhaps there was a swift current of air up there in the zenith. However, not a leaf stir.t:ed on the Com mon ; the foliage hll}ig bla.ck and mas sive, as if cut in bronzeJ even the gas lights • appeared to be infected by the prevailing calm, burning steadily behind their glass screens and turning the neigh boring leaves into the tenderest emerald. Here and · there, in the sombre row of houses stretching along Beacon Street, an illuminated window gilded a few square feet of darkness ; and now and then a footfall sounded on a distant pavement. The pulse of the city throbbed languidly. The lights far and near, the fantastic shadows of the elms and maples, the fall ing dew, the elusive odor of new grass, and that peculiar hush which belongs only to
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A MIDNIGHT FANTASY.
I wished the play had ended a trifle more cheerfully. I wished - possibly because I see enough tragedy all around me with out going to the theatre for it, or possibly it was because the lady who enacted the leading part was a remarkably clean-cut little person with a golden sweep of eye lashes - I wished that Juliet could have had a more comfortable time of it. In stead of a yawning sepulchre, with Romeo and Juliet dying in the middle fore ground, and that luckless young Paris stretched out on the left, spitted like a spring-chicken with Montague's rapier, and Friar Laurence, with a dark lantern, groping about under the melancholy yews, - in place of all this costly piled-up woe, I would have liked a pretty, medireval chapel scene, with illuminated stained-
A MIDNIGHT FANTASY.
21
across the long bridge, and then swiftly forward. I remember, vaguely, that I paused for a moment on the draw of the bridge, to look at the semicircular fringe of lights duplicating itself in the smooth Charles in the rear of Beacon Street, - as lovely a bit of Venetian effect as you will get outside of Venice ; I remember meeting, farther on, near a stiff wooden church in Cambridgeport, a lumbering covered wagon,
evidently from
Brighton
and
bound for Quincy Market ; and still far ther on, somewhere in the vicinity of Har vard Square and the college buildings, I recollect catching a glimpse of a police man, who, probably observing something suspicious in my demeanor, discreetly walked off in an opposite direction.
o,g"""'"'Google
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.&. MIDNIGHT FANTASY.
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PART II.
young Prince Hamlet was not I l1appy at Elsinore. It was not because he missed the gay student-life of Wittenburg, arnl that the little Danish court was • intolerably dull. It was not because the didactic lord chamberlain bored him with long speeches, or that the lord chamberlain's daughter wa.'l be come a shade wearisome. Hamlet had more serious cues for unhappine!l8. He had been summoned sud,lenly from Wit tenburg to attend his father's funeral ; close upon thh•, and while his grief was green, his mother had married with his uncle Claudius, whom Hamlet had never liked.
IB'HE
A MIDNIGHT FANTASY.
27
l1is uncle had called him "our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son," trying to smooth over matteu ; but Hamlet would have none of it.
Therefore, one day,
when the young prince abruptly an nounced his intention
to go abroad,
neither the king nor the queen placed impediments in his way, though, some months previously, they had both pro tested strongly against his returning to Wittenburg. The small-fry of the court knew noth ing of Prince Hamlet's
determination
until he had sailed from Elsinore ; their knowledge then was confined to the fact of his departure.
It was only to Hora
tio, his fellow-student and friend, that Hamlet confided the real cause of his self imposed exile, though perhaps Ophelia. half suspected it.
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A MIDNIGHT FANTASY,
Polonius had dropped an early hint to his daughter concerning Hamlet's intent. She knew that everything was over be tween them, and, the night before he em barked, Ophelia placed in the prince's hand the few letters and trinkets he had given her, repeating, as she did so, a cer tain couplet which somehow haunted Ham let's memory for several days after he was on shipboard : " Take these again ; for to the noble mind
Rich gifts wax poor wlten givel'II prove unkinol."
"These could never have waxed poor," said Hamlet to himself softly, as he leaned over the taffrail, the third day out, spread ing the trinkets in his palm, " being origi nally of but little worth. I fancy that that allusion to ' rich gifts ' was a trifle malicious on the part of the fair Ophe-
A MIDNIGHT FANTASY.
29
lia" ; and he quietly dropped them i11to the sea. It was as a Danish gentleman voyaging for pleasure, and for mental profit also, if that should happen, that Hamlet set forth on his travels. Settled destination he had none, his sole plan being to get clear of Denmark as speedily as possible, and then to drift whither his fancy took him. His fancy naturally took him southward, as it would have taken him uorthward if he had been a southron. Many a time while climbing the bleak crags arouud Elsinore he had thought of the land of the citron and the palm ; lying on his couch at night and listening to the win<l as it howled along the ruachicolated bat tlements of the castle, his dreams haJ turned from the cold, blond ladies of his
30
A MIDNIGHT FANTASY.
father's court to the warmer beauties that ripen under sunny skies.
He was free
now to test the visions of his boyhood. So it chanced, after varions wanderings, all tending imper.!eptibly in one direction, that Hamlet bent his st,eps towards Italy. In those rude days one did not accom plish a long journey without having won derful adventures befall, or encountering divers perils by the way.
It WM a period
when a stout blade on the thigh was a most excellent travelling compimion. Hamlet, though of a philosophical com plexion, was not slower than another man tu scent an affront ; he excelled at feats of arms, and no doubt his skill, caught of the old fencing-master at Elsinore, stood him in good stead more than once when l1is wit would not have saved him.
Cer-
A lfJDNIGBT FANTASY.
31
tainly, he luM.l hair-breadth escapes while toiling through the wilds of Prussia and Bavaria and Switzerland. At all events he counted himself fortunate the night he ar rived at Verona with nothing more serious ·than a two-inch scratch on his sword arm. There he lodged himself, as be<>.ame a gentleman of fortune, in a suit of cham bers in a comfortable palace overlooking the swift-flowing Adige, - a riotous yel low stream t,hat cut the town into two parts, and was spanned here and there by rough-hewn stone bridges, which it sometimes sportively washed away. It was a brave old town that hnd stood sieges and plagues, and was full of mouldy, picturesque buildings and a gayety that has since grown somewhat mouldy. A goodly place to rest in for the way-wom
32
i
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A MIDNIGHT FANTASY.
pilgrim ! He recollected dimly that he had letters to one or two illustrious fami lies ; but he cared not to deliver them at once. It was pleasant to stroll about the city, unknown. There were sights to see: the Roman amphitheatre, and the churches with their sculptured sarcophagi and saintly relics, -interesting joints of mar tyrs, and fragments of the true cross enough to buil<l a ship. The life in the public squares and on the streets, the crowds in the shops, the pageants, the lights, the stir, the color, all mightily • took the eye of the young Dane. He was in a mood to be amused. Every thing diverted him, - the faint tinkling of a guitar-string in an a<ljacent garden at midnight, or the sharp clash of sword blades under his window, when the Mon-
A MIDNIGHT FANTASY,
35
in consequence of an unrequited passion for a certain lady of the city, between whose family and his own a deadly feud had existed for centuries. Somebody had stepped on somebody else's lap-dog in the far ages, and the two families had been slashing and hacking at each other ever since. It appeared that Romeo had scaled a garden wall, one night, and broken upon the meditations of his ina morata, who, as chance would have it, was sitting on her balcony enjoying tho moonrise. No lady could be insensible to such devotion, for it would have been death to Romeo if any of her kinsmen had found him in that particular locality. Some tender phrases passed between them, perhaps ; but tho lady was flurried, taken unawares, and afterwards, it seemed,
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A lllDNIGHT FANTASY.
altered her mind and would have no further commerce with the Montague. This business furnished Mercutio's quiver with innumerable sly shafts, which Romeo received for the most part in good humor. With these three gentleman, -Mercu tio, Benvolio, and Romeo, - Hamlet saw life in Verona, as young men will see life wherever they happen to be ; many a time the nightingale ceased singing and the lark began before they were abed ; but perhaps it is not wise to inquire too closely into this.
.A month had slipped
away since Hamlet's arri,val; the hya cinths were opening in the gardens, and it was spring. One morning, as he and Mercutio were lounging arm in arm on a bridge near their lodgings, tl1ei met a knave in livery
A MIDNIGHT FANTASY.
38
"A very select company, with the ex ception of that rogue Mercutio," said the soldier, laughing.
"What does it mean1"
"My master, the Signior Capulet, gives a ball and supper to-night; these the guests ; I am his man Peter, and if you be not one of the house of Montague, I pray, come and crush a cup of wine with us.
Rest you merry" ; and the knave,
having got his billet deciphered for him, made off. "One must needs go, being asked by both man and master ; but since I am asked doubly, I '11 not go singly; I '11 bring you with me, Hamlet.
It is a
masquerade; I have had wind of it.
The
flower of the city will be there, - all the high-bosomed roses and low-necked lilies.
, "Hamlet's eyes rested on a lady who held to her fea• tures a white satill WIIBk."
A MIDNIGHT FANTASY.
41
Hamlet had seen nothing of society in Verona, properly speaking, and did not require much urging to assent to Mer cutio's proposal, far from foreseeing that so slight a freak would have a fateful se quence. It was late in the night when they pre sented themselves, in mask and domino,
at the Capulet mansion.
The music was
at its sweetest and the torches were at their brightest, as the pair entered the dancing-hall
They had scarcely crossed
the threshold when Hamlet's eyes rested upon a lady clad in a white silk robe, who held to her features, as she moved through the figure of the dance, a white satin mask, on each side of which was disclosed so much of the rosy oval of her face as made one long to look upon the rest.
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A JUDNIOBT FANTASY.
The ornaments this lady wore were pearls; her fan and slippers, like the robe and mask, were white - nothing but white. Her eyes shone almost black contrasted with the braids of warm gold hair that glistened through a misty veil of Venetian stuff, which floated about her from time to time and enveloped her, as the blossoms. do a tree. Hamlet could think of nothing but the "1.mond-tree that stood in full bloom in the little court near his lodging. She seemed to him the incarnation of that riant spring-time which had touched and awakened all the leaves and buds in the sleepy old gardens around Verona. "Mercutio ! who is that lady1" "The daughter of old Capulet, by her
stature."
"And be that dances with bed"
A MIDNIGHT FANTASY.
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43
" Paris, a kinsman to Can Grande della Scala." " Her lover 1 " "One of them." " She has others 1 " "Enough to make a squadron ; only the blind and aged are exempt.." Here the music ceased and the dancers dispersed.
Hamlet followed the lady
with his eyes, and seeing her left alone a moment, approached her.
She received
him graciously, as a mask receives a mask, and the two fell to talking, as people do who have nothing to say to each other and p6ssess the art of saying it.
Pres
ently something in his voice struck on her ear, a new note, an intonation sweet and strange, that made her curious. Who was it1
It could not be Valentine, nor
A MIDNIGHT FANTASY.
45
" I would fain see your face, sir; if it match your voice, it needs must be a kindly one." " I would we could change faces." " So we shall, ·at supper ! " " And hearts, too 1" "Nay, I would not give a merry heart for a sorrowful one ; but I will quit my mask, and you yours; yet," and she spoke under her breath, "if you are, as I think, a gentleman of Verona - a Montague do not unmask." " I am not of Verona, lady ; no one knows me here" ; and Hamlet threw back the hood of his domino. Juliet held her mask aside for a moment, and the two stood looking into each other's eyes. "Lady, we have in faith changed faces, inasmuch as I shall carry yours forever in my memory."
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A .MIDNIGHT FANTASY.
"And I yours, sir," said Juliet, softly, "wishing it looked not so pale aud melan choly." "Hamlet," whispered Mercutio, pluck ing at his friend's skirt, " the follow there, talking with old Capulet, - his wife's nephew, Tybalt, a quarrelsome dog, suspects we are Montagues. Let us_ get out of this peaceably, like soldiers who are to.>o much gentlemen to cause a brawl under a host's roof." With this Mercutio pushed Hamlet to the door, where they were joined by Ben volio. Juliet, with hel' eyes fixed upon the retreating maskers, stretched out her hand and grasped the arm of an ancient serving-woman who happened to be pass ing. " Quick, good Nurse ! go ask his name o,g"""'"'Google
A MIDNIGHT FANTASY.
(7
of yonder gentleman. Not the one in green, dear ! but he that hath the black domino and purple mask. What, did I touch your poo1· rheumatic arm 1 Ah, go now, sweet Nurse!" As the Nurse hobbled off, querulously, on her errand, Juliet murmured to herself an old rhyme she knew : " If he be married, My grave is like to be my wedding bed I "
When Hamlet got back to his own chambers he sat on the edge of his couch in a brown study. The silvery moon light, struggling through the swaying branches of a tree outside the window, drifted doubtfully into the room, and made a parody of that fleecy veil which ere.while had floated about the lissome
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A JIIDNIGHT FANTASY.
form of the lovely Capulet.
That he
loved her, and must tell her that he loved her, was a forego::ie conclusion ; but how should he contrive to see Juliet again 1 No one knew him in Verona; he had carefully preservetl his incognito ; even Mercutio regarded him as simJ?lY a young gentleman from Denmark, taking his ease in a foreign city.
Presented, by Mercutio,
as a rich Danish tourist, the Capulets would receive him courteously, of course ; as a visitor, but not as a suitor.
It was
in another character that he must be pre sented, - his own. He was pondering what st.eps he could take to establish his identity, when he re membered the two or three letters which • he had stuffetl into his wallet on quitting Elsinore.
He lighted a taper and began
A MIDNIGHT FANTASY. examining the papers. were
49
Among them
the half-dozen billet-doux which
Ophelia had returned to him the night before his departure.
They were neatly
tied together by a length of black ribbon, to which was attached a sprig of rose mary.
"That was just like Ophelia. ! "
muttered the young man, tossing the package into the wallet again ; "she was always having cheerful ideas like that." How long. ago seemed the night she had handed him these love-letters in her de mure little way !
How misty and remote
seemed everything connected with the old life at Elsinore !
His father's death,
his mother's marriage, his anguish and isolation, - they were like things that had befallen somebody else.
There. was
something incredible, too, in his present
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A 'MIDNIGHT FANTASY.
situation. Was he dreaming 1 Was he really in Italy, and in love 1 He hastily bent forward and picked up a square folded paper lying half concealed under the others. " How could I have forgotten it ! " It was a missive addressed, in Horatio's angular hand, to the Signior Capulet of Verona, containing a few lines of introduction from Horatio, wl1ose father had dealings with some of the rich Lom bardy merchants and knew many of the leading families in the city. With this, and several epistles, preserved by chance, written to him by Queen Gertrude while he was at the university, Hamlet saw he would have no difficulty in proving to the Capulets that he was the Prince of Den mark. At an unseemly hour the next morning
A KlDNIOHT FANTASY.
51
Mercutio was roused from his slumbers by Hamlet, who counted every minute a hun dred years until he saw Juliet. Mercutio did not take this interruption too patiently, for the honest humorist was very serious as a sleeper ; but hie equilibrium was quickly restored by Hamlet's revelation. The friends were long closeted together, and at the proper, ceremonious hour for visitors, they repaired to the house of Capulet, who did not hide his sense of the honor done him by the prince. With scarcely any prelude Hamlet unfolded the motive of his visit, and was listened to • with rapt attention by old Capulet, who inwardly blessed his stars that he had not given his daughter's hand to the County Paris, as he was on the point of doing. The ladies were not visible on this occa•
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A MIDNIGHT FANTASY.
sion, the fatigues of the ball overnight, etc. ; but that same evening Hamlet was accorded a1,1 interview with Juliet and Lady Capulet, and a few days subse quently all Verona was talking of nothing but the new engagement. The destructive Tybalt scowled at first, and twirled his fierce mustache, and young Paris took to writing dejected poetry; but they both soon recovered their serenity, seeing that nobody minded them, and went together to pay their respects to Hamlet. A new life began now for Hamlet. He shed his inky cloak, and came out in a doublet of insolent splendor, looking like a dagger-handle newly gilt. With his funereal gear he appeared to have thrown off something of his sepulchral gloom. It
A MIDNIGHT FANTASY,
55
Hamlet questioned Mercutio, the honest soldier laughed and stroked his blond mustache. "The boy has gone off in a heat, I don't know where, - to the icy ends of the earth, I believe, to cool himself." Hamlet regretted that Romeo should have had any feeling in the matter; but regret was a bitter weed that did not thrive well in the atmosphere in which the fortu nate lover was moving. He saw Juliet every day, and there was not a fleck upon his happiness, unless it was the garrulous Nurse, against whom Hamlet had taken a singular prejudice. He considered her a tiresome old person, not too decent in her discourse at times, and ad vised Juliet to get rid of her; but the ancient serving woman had been in the family for years,
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A MIDNIGHT FANTASY,
of that "loveliest weight on lightest foot." The sweet Veronese had neiitled in his empty heart, and filled it with music. The ghosts and visions that used to haunt him were laid forever by Juliet's magic. Happy Juliet ! Her beauty had. taken a new gloss. The bud had grown into a flower, redeem ing the promises of the bud.
If her heart
beat less wildly, it throbbed more strongly. If she had given Hamlet of her super abundance of spirits, he had given her of his wisdom and discretion.
She had al
ways been a great favorite in society ; but Verona thought her ravishing now.
The
mantua-makers cut their dresses by her pattems,. and when she wore turquoise, garnets went out of style.
Instead of the
groans and tears, and all those distressing
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A MIDNIGHT FANTASY,
Verona went. At Hamlet'i:1 intercession, the Montagues were courteously asked t� this festival To the amazement of every one the Montagues accepted the invitation and came, and were treated royally, and the long, lamentable feud - it would have sorely puzzled either house to expla.in what it was all about - was at an end. The ad herents of the Capulets and the Montagues were forbidden on the spot to bite any more thumbs at each other. " It will detract from the general gayety of the town," Mercutio remarked. " Sign ior Tybalt, my friend, I shall never have the pleasure of running you through the diaphragm ; a cup of wine with you ! " The guests were still at supper in the great pavilion erected in the garden, which was as light as day with the glare of in-
A MIDNIGHT FANTASY.
69
young person, the daughter of my father's chamberlain. She is rather given to singing ballads of an elegiac nature," added the prince, reflectingly, "but our madcap Romeo will cure her of that. Methinks I see them now - " "0, where, my lord 1" "In my mind's eye, Horatio, sur rounded by their little ones, - noble youths and graceful maidens, in whom the impetuosity of the fiery Romeo is tempered by the pensiveness of the fair Ophelia. I shall take it most unkindly of them, love," toying with Juliet's fin gers, " if they do not name their first boy Hamlet.'' It was just as my lord Hamlet finished speaking that the last horse-car for Boston
70
A lllDNIGHT FANTASY,
- providentially belated between Water town and Mount Auburn - swept round the curve of the track on which I was walking. The amber glow of the car lantern lighted up my figure in the gloom, the driver gave a quick turn on the brake, and the conductor, making a sudden dexterous clutch at the strap over his head, sounded the death-knell of my fantasy as I stepped upon the rear plat form.
THE LITTLE VIOLIHIST. lili!HIS story is no invention of mine. � I could not invent anything half so lovely and pathetic as seems to me the incident which bas come ready-made to my band. Some of you, doubtless, have heard of James Speaight, the infant violinist, or Yonng Americus, as he was called. He was born in London, I believe, and was only four years old when his father brought him to this country, less than three years ago. Since that time he has appeared in concerts and various enter-
THE LITl'LE VIOLINIST.
87
teen or seventeen, and he was merely a baby!
I do not know enough of music to assert
that he had wonderful genius, or any genius at all ;· but it seemed to me he played charmingly, and with the touch of a nat ural musician. I thought "The Last Rose of Summer" the sweetest strain of music
in the world, as it floated up from the small violin.
At the end of his piece, he was lifted over the foot-lights of the stage into the orch�tra, where, with the conductor's bdton in his bawl, he directed the band in playing one or two airs.
In this he
showed a carefully trained ear and a per fect understanding of the music. I wanted to hear the little violin again, but as he made his bow to the audience
THE LITTLE VIOLINIST.
91
such grand thing to be a circus-rider, and the dazzling career of policeman had lost
something of its charm in the eyes of Talbot. It is my custom every night, after the children are snug in their nests and the gas is turned down, to sit on the side of the bed and chat with them five or ten minutes.
If anything has gone wrong
through the day, it is never alluded to at this time.
None but the most agreea
ble topics are discussed.
I make it a
point that the boys shall go to sleep with untroubled hearts. ended they
When our chat is
say their prayers.
Now,
among the pleas which they offer up for the several members of the family, they frequently intrude the claims of rather curious objects for Divine compassion. o,g;,,,,, by
92
'l'HE LITTLE VIOLINIST,
Sometimes it is a rocking-horse that baa broken a leg, sometimes it is a Shem or Japhet, who· has lost an arm in being removed from the Noah's Ark; Pinky and luky, the two kitteus, and Rob, the dog, seldom escape without the warmest recommendations to mercy. So it did not surprise me at all this Saturday ni :;ht when both boys prayed God to watch over and bless the little violinist. The next morning at the breakfast. table, when I opened the newspaper, which is always laid beside my plate, the first paragraph my eyes fell upon was this: "James Speaigbt, the infant violinist, died in this city late on Saturday night. At the matinee of the 'Nuiad Queen,' on the after.
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THE LITTLE VIOLINIST,
fast., with the slanted sunlight from the window turning their curls into real gold, and I had not the heart to tell them what had happened. Of all the prayers that floated up to heaven, that Saturday night, from the bedsides of sorrowful men and women, or from the cots of happy children, what accents could have fallen more pit.eously and t.enderly upon the ear of a list.ening angel than the prayer of little James Speaight ! He knew he was dying. The faith he had learned, perhaps while running at his mother's side, long ago, in some green English lane, came to him then. He remembered it was Christ who said, "Suf fer little children to come unto me," and the beautiful prayer rose to his lips: "Ora-
THE LITTLE VIOLINIST,
96
tive airs all by itself, in the place where it is kept, missing the touch of the baby fingers which used to waken it ii)to life!
Cambridge: Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.